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Comparative Analysis of Regents Achievement Data
EDL 698 A&B
Rebecca (Sipprell) Buczak
Summer/Fall 2011
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Perhaps one of the most trying times during the school year for an administrator
of any level or pedigree, is Regents exam time. The Regents examinations are a direct
reflection of the teaching capability and achievement rating that a given school carries.
Despite the variance in exams from year-to-year, the weight of the success of a school
district relies heavily on these New York State examinations. From the classroom
teacher, to the building principal, to district leadership, exam time is a stressful time, and
everyone wants to see the hard work that they have dutifully put in shine through.
As I approached my internship in the West Seneca School District, I knew that I
was responsible for ensuring the coordination and logistics of the NYS Regents exams
for four grade levels, spanning the vastness of the district. Within the West Seneca
district there are four different categories that a student can fall under, depending on
where they attend direct instruction. Schooling locations include West Seneca West HS
(WS), West Seneca East HS (ES), the Alternative Learning Center (ALC), or an out-ofdistrict private sector institution (Immaculata, Nichols, etc.). It is important from a
district stand point to keep close track of which students attend which schools, because
on exam day all the students will show up at the local high school testing site, and it is
your job to make sure that their exam scores are sent to the right location.
Before exams began, I worked closely with Daryl Janus, CIO (chief information
officer) of the West Seneca CSD. Daryl is the data and technology go-to representative
for the district. Daryl enlightened me with helpful hints and shortcuts to quickly navigate
through numerous and cumbersome Excel spreadsheets, PDF files, and logs of student
information. Gathering, collecting and sorting information from so many different high
schools can be taxing; timely organization is essential.
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After speaking with some teachers in regards to their expectations for this year’s
summer school program, I quickly decided that an efficient return of the cumulative
examination reports was much needed for teacher satisfaction. It was refreshing to note
how many teachers were earnestly interested in how the students performed, in
comparison to how they performed during the regular school year. The teachers wanted
to see collective data on the students who successfully completed summer school.
Perhaps it was for the satisfaction of knowing that their efforts did not go unnoticed on
these select students, or perhaps it was purely for curiosity’s sake. Never-the-less, I was
not about to let an opportune request go by without being addressed. After all, if the
grades are that important to the district as a whole, they should be shared and digested
with the staff that is responsible for the acquisition of the information.
I spoke with Daryl about setting up a system of reporting this data so that it would
be usable by the district to report to the state, but not merely wasted and treated as a state
protocol. I wanted a way to collect the data so that I could dissect it and reiterate it to the
staff. Due to the sheer numbers of students involved in the summer Regents
examinations, we decided that we would utilize the efforts of the grading teams to
collectively record and organize the data in a way that it would useful for both state
reporting and district level dispersal.
I decided to create statistical information forms that would indicate the school that
the group of students attended, the teachers responsible for summer instruction, the exam
name and date, the number of students in that category, and then a data table to show how
many students scored at each of the percentage ranges. As each group of teachers
finished administering their exam and came to me to report completion and begin
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grading, I handed them each a set of these papers. Their first step would be to divide the
students in their course up by school, each stack having one of the statistical information
sheets on top. In this way, they could keep track of student achievement right on the
statistical information sheet. This also proved to be helpful in the scanning process, as
students needed to be divided by school, so that we could make sure all the examination
scores were sent to the correct homeschool location. In addition, after the reporting of all
the scores was complete, the tests needed to be physically taken to the homeschool, so
that if any rifts were to occur, the school would have them to reference.
The statistical information sheet on top of each of the piles for each of the courses
created an efficient visual organization. They were color-coded: green for East, blue for
West, pink for ALC and yellow for “other”. This made the piles of exams easy to
navigate through. With the statistics right on top of the pile, it also made it easy for
homeschool principals to reference student achievement as needed.
After all the labor-intensive work was complete, I had the chance to go back and
actually digest the data that I had collected. I also researched how West Seneca schools
had performed on the 2010 Regents exams so that I would have a base number to
compare the data to. I found that West Seneca schools performed pretty well as a
district, even though our summer school numbers hit over in combination with the
Middle School. For the purpose of my study, I compared the results both at a district
level and at a building level, comparing West Seneca East Senior to West Seneca West
Senior, with students attending other schools having their grades reported to their
homeschool within the district.
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I decided that the most logical way to compare the statistical data that I had
accumulated would be to look at it course by course. Looking first at Algebra
2/Trigonometry, 95% of WSCSD students passed the exam when it was first
administered in June 2010. Separating that 95%, 96% of native West Seneca East
students passed and 94% of native West Seneca West students passed. That being said,
West Seneca surpassed the New York State average of a 65% passing rate.
Unfortunately, the A2Trig Regents exam was not offered over the summer, so West
Seneca’s passing rate holds at 95% for this course.
Looking at Chemistry, 82% of WSCSD students passed the June 2010 Regents
exam, 86% of East students and 80 % of West students. For this course, summer school
instruction did help to raise the passing rate, but not tremendously. After the Summer
School program, of the 11 students who took the exam for a second time, 5 passed, 71%
of Summer School students (75% of East students and 28% of West students). That is 5
more students reported to the state for adequate completion of the course.
Delving into another one of the sciences, Earth Science was the science course
with the lowest performance data after the June 2010 exam, with East students bringing
in an 80% passing rate and West students bringing in an 84% passing rate. There were
only students from West Seneca West who ended up taking the examination again in
August 2010. Of these 47 students, 30 passed on the second round giving Summer
School a passing rate of 64% for Earth Science. The running total of student successes in
summer school is now up to 35 students who can additionally be reported to the state and
counted in the passing rates.
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The Regents English 3 exam saw much success in June 2010, 94% of the WSCSD
passing the exam, 99% of East students and 92% of West students. In addition to those
high numbers, the English department saw more success after the August 2010 exam. Of
the 31 students who gave the exam a second go-around, 24 students passed giving
Summer School a 75% passing rate for English 3. Add that to the running total, and the
Summer School program is already responsible for the passing of 59 more students,
district-wide.
The Regents Geometry exam administered in June 2010 brought some struggle.
WSCSD saw a 76% passing rate for its students. While lower than many other exam
results, this number still kept West Seneca above the New York State average of 72%.
West Seneca West students passed at a rate of 75%, while West Seneca East students
managed to pass just a few more, giving them 77%. The August 2010 Geometry exam
was just as relentless as the June 2010 exam. Luckily, the preparedness of some of the
students who went through the Geometry course and review did find that they were more
able to pursue a passing grade in August. Of the 112 students taking the exam, 57
students passed, reflecting a solid 51% passing rate for Geometry. Geometry’s numbers
alone literally doubled the number of students who are now deemed “passing” by the
state, bringing the total number up to 116.
The sister mathematics course, Integrated Algebra, held its own just as well.
After the June 2010 exam, the math department saw 87% of WSCSD students passing the
exam, 86% from East and 85% from West. However Integrated Algebra saw one of the
biggest increases in passing rates after the Summer School program and August 2010
exam. Of the dramatic 128 students who took the Algebra exam, a stunning 93 students
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passed. This gave the Algebra team a 76% passing rate for the Summer School Program,
and added nearly 100 more students to the total passing numbers for the district.
The June 2010 Living Environment exam showed a very high performance rate
for West Seneca students. With an overall passing rate of 96% for the district, West
students contributed to that with a 97% passing rate, while East students contributed a
97% passing rate. A higher passing rate during the first round resulted in smaller
numbers for the Summer School course. With only 37 students signed up to take the
August 2010 exam, the science department was hopeful for a big return in passing grades.
Bringing in just over half, 60% of students passed the Living Environment August 2010
exam, adding another 22 students to the total cumulative number of passing grades.
In total, due to the diligence and efficient teaching of the Summer School 2010
team, the West Seneca Central School District helped 231 high school students reach
their goal of passing a Regents exam. 366 Regents exams were administered over the 2
examination days in August, and 63% of high school students walked away with a
passing. There is not telling exactly how much of an impact a passing grade may have
had on each individual student. For some, it was a ticket out of an extra course for the
2011/2012 school year. For others, it served as a mechanism for happiness and pride in
the parents of these students. And finally for others, it was a gateway to high school
completion and, for many, college. In examining the effectiveness of West Seneca’s
Summer School program, the numbers speak for themselves. An additional 231 students
are moving on, in whatever regard, and owe a lot of that success to the determination and
persistence of the select staff. Clearly the Summer School program is fulfilling its
purpose.
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